Official IRCTC apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 announced in partnership with Microsoft

This might be the biggest coup for Microsoft in India. IRCTC, the notorious Indian Railways train ticket booking website known for its crashes and slowness under usual heavy Indian loads has received an exclusive app for the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 platforms, developed in partnership with Microsoft. This app will naturally let you book tickets, make PNR enquiries, check booking and cancellation histories and more. But the most important catch here is that the app will not be able to book tickets between 08:00 to 12:00 or 23:30 to 00:30 hrs of any day. This is presumably to reduce the expected additional load from mobile devices in the peak booking times, due to this app. You can download the app for Windows 8 here (link now LIVE) and Windows Phone 8 here.

Built with the Metro UI in mind, the app features all the necessary implementations presented in a panoramic view. It can perform all the tasks that can be accomplished on the IRCTC website including –

Make Train Enquiries

Make Railway reservations

Check PNR status

Check booking/cancellation history

Check ticket availability

Use Windows Phone as the ticket using live tile

Apart from this, you also can see travel routes of all the listed trains and even access saved Traveler profiles from other devices. Microsoft also boasts that most of it is powered by the Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, and hence the partnership in the first place. This exclusive app is available only for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 devices currently. Screenshots of both the apps below –